Food Security and its Constraining Factors in South Asia: Challenges and Opportunities
Journal Title: Research Journal Social Sciences (Online) - Year 2016, Vol 5, Issue 2
Abstract
Since 1961, significant progress in terms of increasing food supplies has been made in south Asia, resulted into cereals’ supply increase by 2.7, 3.4, 3.7, 5.1 and 5.4 folds respectively in Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Per capita availability of cereals faces either declining trend or has remained stagnated most recently. Currently per capita daily consumption ranges from 2440 calories in Pakistan to 2673 calories in Nepal - substantially lower than the world average. There is wide spread poverty in the region and is ranked low merely above the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in most of the development and food security indicators. South Asia's record in reducing malnutrition is one of the world's worst. Micronutrient deficiency, ‘hidden hunger’, is also pervasive in the region. These numbers highlights the fact that enhanced food availability on its own cannot guarantee good nutrition status at the household level. For example, HIES data does not show any increase in daily intake of total calories per person in Pakistan—hinting at poor access to nutritious food. Major causes of food insecurity in South Asia include faster growth in population, fast and unplanned urbanization through rural to urban migration, reduction in arable land, declining average farm size besides skewed distribution, low productivity due to low R&D investments and land degradation, slow process of structural transformations and poor institutions, and changes in climate. The issue of global warming has emerged as a new real threat to food security. The most part of the region is already hot and growing of cereals is already under heat stress. Further increase in temperature could cross the level beyond the optimal for growing some crops which is expected to reduce the yields significantly. The adverse impacts of climate change on agriculture can be dealt with mitigation and adaptation strategies. The structure of farming and poor resource as well as poverty in rural areas could be the major hurdles to adapting to climate change. It is anticipated that South Asian countries are likely to face severe food crisis by 2050 and the issue of food security is going to be critical issue in the years to come. The good news is that the countries in the regional have started emphasizing on assuring food security to masses by moving step forward from agricultural and food policies—targeting supply side, to food security and nutritional policies—accessibility, and utilization aspects. To effectively dealing the danger of food crisis in coming decades in the region, various strategies like: (a) paradigm shift from the policy of national level self-sufficiency to regional self-reliance in staple foods; (b) sharing of food production technologies and experiences; (c) seed banking and exchange of genetic material; (d) revising the SAARC food banking mechanism; and, (e) devising more effective strategies for dealing with disasters, are suggested.
Authors and Affiliations
MUNIR AHMAD, MUHAMMAD IQBAL, UMAR FAROOQ
Keywords
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